


Sleep Well, Beast

by j_marquis



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Golden Deer Route, M/M, Post-Time Skip, battle at gronder, childhood crushes, dimitri lives au, gross gore of war, heed the tag for violence, more characters will probably be added - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2020-10-29 01:03:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 18,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20788001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_marquis/pseuds/j_marquis
Summary: When he was a child, Felix's brother took him to hunt a boar. He told him that he had to kill the boar, but what if he didn't? What if the boar could be saved?aka. What would happen if the Blue Lions that Byleth recruited on the Golden Deer route saved their king at the Battle at Gronder Field? Feat. Felix is an angry gay, Sylvain is the best worst wingman ever, and Claude regrets quite a few life decisions.





	1. Skeletons say they'll Stay

Gronder Field had become a mass grave, but the dead were unaffected. They simply walked through the gore, stepped into the gutted, bleeding horses that kicked with the last of their strength, desperately trying to stand, unaware they were already dead. His ghosts didn't stain their boots with the blood, didn't take the hands of the soldiers reaching out for some connection in their last moments. He wondered if his ghosts saw them. If they saw his dead, reminders of why he kept going forward. A javelin lodged in his back. He kept walking. Another. He could see her, as red as the blood that soaked the field, and so he kept walking. Dragging Areadbhar, it pulled through the gore and the grass, streaking dark where his steps fell, catching blood in his cloak. Another lance. He stepped up onto the dais where she mocked him. Where his dead called for her to join them.

_Avenge us._  
_Avenge us._

1\. Felix

Glenn took him hunting when he was no more than a child. A boar hunt, they loaded the children up into the cart they would use to take their winnings home, and Felix sat between DIma and Sylvain and watched the forest in the north of Faerghus spread out tall and endless all around them. Dogs circled the horses, noses to the ground, guiding them after the wild boar that would become a feast. Dima had a small lance, given to him at his last birthday, and Glenn had promised he would get to help with the hunt.

"No, Fe, you're too little. The boar would crush you." Glenn had chided, his smile as beaming bright as the winter sun. "Next time, when you're a little bigger."

The men sang bawdy songs about tavern wenches and heroism as they rode ahead of the wagon, lances raised, they were heroes as much as they were hunters, soldiers in peacetime providing for the villages. No part of the boar would be wasted. Bones would serve as scaffolding in clothes, training weapons for DIma and Felix and Sylvain made of the tusks and the sharp curves of the ribcage. They could make cloaks with the hide, and the meat would let them eat well for weeks as the days grew colder and the nights longer. Felix curled into his winter coat and huddled between Dima and Sylvain. He'd never seen a boar hunt before.

"Glenn said he would let me take a shot at the boar!" Dima told him, with all the brightness and enthusiasm of someone who had never seen death.

Felix had seen his mother die. She'd wasted away, hollow and dull eyed of illness last winter. Felix had sat by her side all the while, reading her stories of heroes and adventures and great, noble chivalry. She told him his voice was so, so kind. She called him by names that were not his, called him _Dear Rodrigue, little Glenn, so strong, so good._ She touched his face but she didn't see Felix, with the tears that streamed down his face as he realized his mother was dying.

He wondered if the boar they slaughtered would know. Wondered if he would see death coming on the tips of their spears. If it would run, try to speak to it's loved ones, the way his mother had. But illness was not the same beast as a hunt, it came slower, quieter.

He was learning that hunting was loud. The dogs howled as they picked up the scent, chasing after barely seen hoof prints in the forest bed. And the horses picked up and the men cried out to each other the strategies for defeating the hulking beast. The ragged end of a wooden spear jutted from it's back, an old wound, matting it's thin, wiry hair with old blood. And it snarled at the soldiers, and it's cries broke the forest. Felix buried his face in Dima's shoulder. He couldn't watch it die. The soldiers filled the boar with their lances, but all Felix heard were it's cries, weakening, pitiful whines that filled Felix's mind.

He had to look. Because Glenn had taken Dima's hand, "Come on, little prince," and led him to the dying boar, showed him where to stick it with his new spear, how to kill the beast.

But this was not hunting, and the boar was not a beast, but a king. And they wouldn't use his meat, he had no tusks, no training weapons, just a cursed thing dragging a Hero's Relic slick with mud and gore through the graveyard that Gronder had become. Heaving with spears, just another of the dead, snarling, angry dead. A wild boar, Felix had called him. Just another thing to be hunted down. Another beast, sunken and pale.

This wasn't his Dima. And he wasn't little Fe, skinny and crying and holding his Dima's hand because the dark was a scary, scary place. And there were no tales of chivalry to read to the dying. No comfort in a heroic death. There was no such thing as a heroic death. There was no nobility here, the soldiers bleeding out, puke and piss and shit blending with the gore and the viscera and it all leaked up the wild boar's thick blue cloak, matting the colors to a mulled darkness. He limped, dragging his relic, the elaborate spear slick with all that he had killed. Edelgard's soldiers launched lances and arrows that pierced his hide and his blood flowed in with all that was already there. 

Felix stood still, he didn't know what he could do, as Dimitri advanced on the dais from where Edelgard told her archers to fire, again, their arrows tore at his cloak, one of them shot his eyepatch clean off, revealing the ragged lid, badly sewn closed. And Felix had to stare, and he had to wonder where his Dima had gone, where he had been these five long years. Felix had to hate himself, for abandoning his king. For taking the easy way out. For letting his hatred turn him into a beast, like grief had taken his Dima away and replaced him with a wild boar, growling and snarling and talking to the dead that would never let him be.

And when the boar fell to the ground it wasn't the desperate little pained whimpers that he'd heard as a child, it was anger, cursing, pleading with the dead to just give him the strength to stand and Felix had to act. Had to shield him with his own body from the last volley of arrows before it was over.

And it was over. And Felix didn't have the strength to stand and he covered Dimitri's body with his own, clutching that bloodied blue cloak in his hands and he wondered why he wasn't dead. Why weren't either of them dead? Why was the beast under him still breathing? The soldiers were gone, the healers blessed the dead and tended to the dying, generals looked for their soldiers. Felix folded his fingers in the fur lining of the torn cloak so stained with blood, held this fallen king of a broken country. 

And for a moment, he thought he heard the dead that had so haunted Dimitri, thought he heard his brother, calling his name. And he clung to that voice, to Glenn, and the times when they had been whole. He heard Glenn calling for him, "Fe! Fe is that you?" He thought he felt the warmth, the light that washed over memories he'd pushed so far back. Felix started to sink into it, started to let the dead pull him close. If Dima would just come with him, if he could just reach out and take his brother's hand.


	2. In the Graveyard of the Outcast Dead

"Felix! Felix wake up!"

That wasn't his brother. His brother wasn't so loud. He didn't shake Felix, didn't pull at him, yank him from the warmth. Didn't ruin the dream he clutched with the bloodied fur cloak in his hands.

"Fuck, Felix come on. You gotta' wake up. Please. Please, Felix."

Sylvain. And the battlefield at Gronder. Covering Dimitri with his own body because he didn't know what else to do, the arrows sinking into him, the blood and filth and the boar hunt of his childhood. Sylvain was pulling at him, covered in dirt and dried blood and sweat and the streaks of tears through the mess, but he was unharmed. Or healed. The healers were still working, tending to the wounded as remnants of three armies pulled themselves from the battlefield.

Felix opened his eyes.

"Goddess, _fuck,_ Felix. Is that Dimitri?"

He tried to speak, retched thin bile into the filthy ground beside him. Only managed to nod. Coughed again, doubling over with the force of it and he felt the arrows in his back, pulling, the warm wetness of wounds opening all over again.

"Is he alive?"

Felix could only nod again. The world around him was swimming, but Dimitri was still breathing. Somehow. He focused on that, on the ragged in out in out in out of Dimitri's breath. He felt like a child again, buried in his best friend's winter coat, hiding his face from the hunt.

"Can you stand?" Sylvain asked. It was a stupid question, but Felix didn't have the energy to even fix Sylvain with a glare. Of course he couldn't stand. Besides the weight of the boar prince all around him, Felix was littered with arrows, other injuries from the battle that had come before he saw Dimitri.

"Yeah. Sorry, that was dumb. I think I saw Dedue somewhere, let me find him, he can help get you both somewhere safe. Mercie, too, she's somewhere around here with Marianne and Professor Manuela." Sylvain reached out, gently brushed Felix's hair away from his face. "Will you be okay if I go?"

Another weak nod. Dimitri was here. Alive. His boar prince survived to fight another day. Of course he would be alright. As long as they both survived, he would be alright. Never good, never again good, or clean or right, but time would march on as it had and he would live. And Felix had to suppose that was alright.

Sylvain darted off across the abandoned battlefield, and Felix let his eyes close again.

"You have to stick it between the ribs, my prince. Straight through to the heart." Glenn took Dima's hand and guided the brand new spear to the boar, still heaving with it's last breaths. Felix could see it's eyes, glassed over with the beginnings of a pained death, and he couldn't look away. This was a beast, yes, but pain was still pain, no matter the creature. And Glenn, shining and noble and already knighted, his kind big brother, guiding Dima's hands as they shook on the spear to deliver the killing blow.

"Will it hurt?" Dima asked, his voice had all the innocence of a child. Innocence they would never have again.

"My prince, this is the way of the world Sometimes things have to hurt so we can live."

Together, they pushed, and the boar screamed when it died, ringing in Felix's ears when he buried his face against Sylvain, held on to him. That scream never left him. It haunted him, falling from Glenn's bloodied lips in nightmares of a Duscur he had never seen, screaming with Dimitri's wild eyes. The wild boar, dead, trampling the bodies that he knew haunted Dimitri, screaming, always screaming. And it rang in his ears when the men celebrated the successful end of a hunt, carried the prince on their shoulders and congratulated him on his first kill. Told him he would have his pick of the winnings. That they would feast like Gods, that he had helped to feed the entire castle. They celebrated Little Prince Dimitri, their newest hunter, their future king, and they turned their eyes from the pain of death.

Didn't notice that Felix cried. No one ever did. And later, they would say he never cried at all.

Pretended not to see when Sylvain brought the healers, and separated the boar prince from him. Pretended not to see that Felix was crying, silently, shaking. Not for his injuries, no, he scarcely felt those anymore, but for the screams. For the innocence that came with the fear of death. With sympathy for the dead.

They pretended not to see his tears, and that was a kindness enough. Sylvain lifted him, cradled him like he was just a child, put him in the cart with the rest of the wounded. Dimitri was there, slumped against a bench, his head lolled to the side, pale hair matted with blood. No one had covered his missing eye, and the messy black stitches criss-crossed through his eyelid, holding it closed where the skin sunk against his skull with no eye to wrap around. Sylvain noticed him staring.

"Do you want to sit with him?"

Felix didn't have the energy to respond with his usual spite. Didn't have the spirit to hide his softness. Just nodded. He did want to sit with him. Wanted to feel the prince, no, the king, breathing. Needed to know he was alive. Sylvain set Felix down on the ground beside Dimitri, brushed his hair back just once more. Smiled, in that soft way he so rarely did anymore.

"We're gonna be okay, Fe. You saved him."

But did he, really? Did he save anyone? When Dimitri woke, it would once again be to the whispers of the long dead, voices in his mind that pleaded for revenge and drove him to take joy in the slaughter. They would still be haunted by the screams of the wild boar, and Felix wouldn't know if they came from his memories or from his king. Glenn's ghost would still be in both their nightmares and those would be the only thing that still tethered them together.

Still, he managed a smile for Sylvain.

"Mercie's gonna ride back here with you guys in case anyone still needs healing." Sylvain told him, before he was gone.

And in the few minutes Felix was left there alone he still heard the screams. Whistles of arrows and spears flying. The howl of the hunting dogs, the screams of the wild boar with blood frothing at it's lips. The pleas of those long dead. But they didn't plead for revenge, no, not from him. They had that in spades from the boar beside him.

_Save him,_ they begged, instead, _Save him from us._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aftepes.tumblr.com


	3. You said you weren't Afraid to Die

Despite Mercedes' best efforts, Dimitri hadn't woken when the cart arrived back at Garreg Mach. Felix drifted in and out of his awareness, hazy, mostly unaware of his surroundings. Even the rattle and shift and sway of the cart didn't effect him. Even knowing his head rested on the filthy fur of the boar prince's coat failed to make him react as he would. It was almost a comfort, the way his shoulder moved as he breathed, signs he was still alive. His hand rested against Dimitri's, separated by layers and layers of glove and gauntlet, but touching all the same. The closest they had been since Duscur. It was familiar, in a way that made him want to break down and retch and sob and scream to everyone who would listen about everything they had been. About what they had lost.

They used to read him stories of knights and adventures and nobility, chivalry, courage and grace, all the things a man was supposed to be. Glenn taught him to read from those stories, told him about the great heroes that had made Faerghus what it is. Was. He had to remember the land he had grown up in no longer existed the same way it had. Edelgard's war had changed more than perhaps she had intended. Glenn's eyes lit when he read Felix those stories, he idealized these heroes of legend. He told Felix often how he was going to be a knight of Faerghus, like their father before him, like the heroes of old. He would serve the king, fight grand battles.

Felix used to think it was a noble goal.

There was nothing noble about this. Nothing noble about the bloodsoaked clothes, dirty faces, wide, shaking eyes of those who had seen war and lived to tell the tale. They would. Years from now, the winners would write histories of this glorious war and the heroes who won it. No one would talk about the deaths and the nightmares and the filthy rank smell of battle that never really left your hands. The stink magic left behind in the air after you cast it, scorched earth. Places where nothing would ever grow again. They would build monuments there, to cover up what had been done, and they would say it was a testament to a great war. They would cover up all that remained, that they didn't want to be known.

Garreg Mach was one of those monuments. The moment you scratched beneath the surface, the pristine halls of the Monastery, all the sins of the church came to light. Books they confiscated, hid. Skeletons and holy weapons made of blood and bone. Felix didn't know the half of it, and the more that came to light the less he wanted to.

He tried to protest that he had healed, he just needed rest. Still, they made him go to the infirmary, Sylvain insisted on helping him walk, strong arm around his waist, near carrying him with the rest of the wounded. It took two soldiers to carry Dimitri, the wild boar was still limp, unconscious, a mass of dead weight. Felix watched them haul him into the infirmary, drape his whole long body over the bed, still in his bloody armor, his massive cloak. Filthy and bloodstained, he shifted with his breathing, with the impact of the healing spells that washed through his body.

Healing spells weren't pretty. It wasn't elegant, to have injuries knitted back together, bones yanked back into place. Flesh knitting itself together that quickly ached, burned. The body wasn't meant to heal that rapidly. He watched Dimitri convulse as broken bones were fused together, as tips of arrows were forced out of his back. But the boar didn't wake. Felix didn't know if he could. It could be days, it could be weeks. Perhaps the boar would never wake, lost in dreams with the dead he still spoke to.

He hated the way that made his gut wrench with dread panic. Pain, that his prince, his king was in pain. Pain that he had failed the king he was to serve. Felix hated that pain, because he had spent so, so long trying not to care about Dimitri. Trying to let him go, because he was so far gone. He followed the Alliance away from Faerghus, tried so hard to tell himself his Dima was lost. They left him to die somewhere in Duscur, watching Glenn take arrows, take spears for his king.

It was supposed to be a noble death. They honored Glenn. Even his father said he had died a good death. A hero's death. Dimitri had watched it. Felix heard it. And didn't they both become wild things, feral and angry?

But only Dimitri heard the dead.

"Do you want to sit with him?" Sylvain asked. There was no judgement in his voice. No comment about the years he spent convincing himself, convincing all of them he thought Dimitri less than the dirt on his boots.

Felix looked away. He hated meeting Sylvain's eyes. Nodded.

"C'mere. I'll help you up."

It would have been so much easier to love Sylvain in this way that twisted him up, made him want to cry and scream. Because Sylvain met him with a smile. Promises to live forever, until they died together. Sylvain's touch was gentle when he helped Felix up, hands on him when he limped helplessly to the other side of the infirmary. It would have been so easy. But Sylvain was like the brother that had left him. The family that he had wished to be a part of, running the fields with Dima and Ingrid and Sylvain, listening to stories at his brother's feet. He couldn't look at his father. Dima had become a wild boar masquerading as a man. Ingrid looked at him and only saw a ghost. And Glenn, long dead. At least Sylvain could be his brother. And in that way, Felix loved him.

Not in the way he loved and ached and twisted and hated when he looked at Dimitri. Hated what he had become. He hated the wild boar that had taken away his first love, his best friend, his king. The king of a land gone to ruin, shattered by war. The boar king of a wasteland.

Felix sank into a chair beside where his king rested. In the end, they all took their father's places, and Felix took his, at the right hand of the King of Faerghus. He couldn't stand, not for too long anyway, but he could sit for his vigil at Dimitri's side. He sat, and he watched, heedless of the sounds of the Monastery around them, the healers and the wounded and loved ones looking for their soldiers. He bit his tongue, he didn't snarl at the multitudes who came to see Dimitri, to wish him well. Didn't even narrow a glare at Dedue when he came to stand guard. After all, they were there for he same purpose. For the same man. He couldn't bring himself to hate the man who had kept his king alive, not with the vitriol he had managed in his youth. He simply remained.

And it was there he would remain, he realized, until his king awoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk with me about stuff and things and video games on tumblr~
> 
> aftepes.tumblr.com


	4. We Learned to Watch Each Other Die

2\. Dimitri

"You have to stick it between the ribs, my prince. Straight through to the heart." Glenn told him, the warm leather of his glove over Dimitri's small, shaking hands. The spear hardly looked long enough to get that deep into the wounded boar, and it's eyes were full of filth and pain. Breath heaved, pushing blood out through so many wounds.

"Will hurt?" Dimitri heard the shaking in his own voice. He sounded so small, so young. And he supposed he was, only just old enough to go on his first boar hunt, to have his first metal spear. He'd been so excited, showing off his new weapon to Fe and Sylvain on the cart while they rode into the woods, talking about what great hunters, what great knights they would all be. Just like his father. Just like Glenn.

"My prince, this is the way of the world. Sometimes things have to hurt so we can live." Glenn told him, guiding his hand, pushing through the thick muscle of the boar, watching it die. Let it scream out loud, going still and limp and heavy. Dimitri backed away from the thick blood that pooled around them, moving towards Dimitri's new winter boots. And still the boar was dead. They would feast. 

"You've done well, Dima." Glenn told him, his hand on Dimitri's shoulder, watching as the soldiers gathered the boar, hefted it onto the cart and moved the children to the front, to sit beside the driver who guided the horses towards home. The men congratulated Dimitri, slapped his back and promised him the finest cuts from the boar, rich meats, training weapons carved from it's tusks. 

Tracks of tears were dried on Fe's cheeks. He was always so small, so easy to cry, desperate for Dimitri's care and attention. He knew Felix did not get enough care at home, that Rodrigue was too busy with his own work and Glenn had the weight of the world on his shoulders, even so young Dimitri saw the hollow loneliness in Fe's eyes and so he would give him the world. He wrapped his cloak around the smaller boy, his arms around his shoulders and he let Fe rest against him. He was a warm, solid weight and Dimitri felt himself nodding off to sleep, the boar's dying cries ringing in his head.

_Avenge us._   
_As if she killed us with her own hands._   
_She'll kill the rest of them too, if you let her._   
_Avenge us._   
_Avenge us._   
_Don't let her take my brother too._   
_She must suffer for what she did._   
_For Duscur._   
_For Lady Rhea._   
_For the war._   
_Avenge us._   
_Avenge us._   
_Avenge us._

He thought he felt Felix, then, as the arrows sunk into him, as their spears broke his armor, blood and gore staining him that he could never scrub clean. He thought he felt Felix, his Fe, the small crying thing who wanted to hold on to Dimitri whenever he could. And he wished he could move, he wished he could guard Felix from the arrows and spears. Wanted to guard him from the wars. The hatred and the cruelty and the death. But he could only buckle under the man who shielded him with his own body. Tried to hold him, but his hands wouldn't lift, he couldn't move. He was to die here, steps from his revenge. Steps from the silence of the dead. Unable to protect that which mattered most and never to earn his forgiveness. And all he wanted was Fe's forgiveness. To see him smile again, to hear his name on those lips. He would die, the arrows and spears in his back, the horrors of the Gronder Field all around him, screaming and dying and pleading for mercy and revenge and all he could see, all he could hear, all he could feel was Felix, begging for him to live.

In his daze, he could hear Sylvain, then Mercedes and the Professor. Not that he could make out what they were saying, just their voices, wet with concern. The searing heat of the healing magic that wrenched through his body, ripping him from the sweet haze of death. There was so little left for him in this world, but he couldn't hate them for healing him. He had Felix, his slender hands scrabbling to remain close, his breath heavy with tears he hadn't shed since he was so small, buried in Dimitri's arms. Just like the child he had once been, trying to stay close to Dimitri.

He dreamed of the Monastery, the way it had once been, golden days when they could pretend things were okay. Sparring with Felix and Dedue in the training grounds, feasts and battles that meant nothing with training weapons. The dreamed of the warmth dancing in the reception hall the night of the celebration, stealing liquor from Professor Manuela's cabinet and sitting on the bridge near the Goddess Tower drinking with Sylvain and Ingrid and Dedue, Felix stood behind them pretending he didn't want to be a part of it. By the end of that night he was sitting with the rest, tucked between Sylvain and Dimitri like he had never left. Dreams made it seem so much more peaceful than it had been, dreams made it seem like there were no nightmares then, no plots or deaths or broken families.

He wanted to stay in that dream forever. In that night they sat drinking straight from the bottle, sitting on the ledge of the bridge so their legs dangled into the nothingness. Sylvain laughing as he poured liquor into Ingrid's open mouth, Felix stole his cape and wrapped it around himself to block out the late night chill. And when he called DImitri a boar there was no malice in his voice, he passed him the bottle without comment. Without flinching away when their hands touched.

He wanted to stay in that dream forever.

Where he couldn't feel the healing spells that wracked his body with more pain than the injuries had. Where if he died, it was a noble death on a battlefield saving Fodlan from her machinations. Where he had made change, where he had done good, where a new day could dawn and his death would be for something. Where Felix could forgive him. And perhaps that would be enough. It had to be enough. He couldn't imagine surviving this battle.

But it wasn't as though he could ignore the healing spells that worked the ache through him as bones and flesh wrought itself together. Couldn't ignore the vague sense that there was a tug between the hero's death that called for him, and the healing that tugged him back towards the land of the living.

"You're not fucking _allowed_ to die, boar."

He wished he could sink into the grace of death. How peaceful it would be to let go, to sink into his true fate. But that voice, calling to him, forced through tears, the Felix he thought had left him. He was begging. Begging to see Dimitri live. And Dimitri couldn't deny him anything, he never could.

He had to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aftepes.tumblr.com
> 
> Come talk to me about stuff and anything at all <333


	5. And it was your Heart on the Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a paragraph or two in this chapter that mentions childhood crushes and first kisses between characters that are 12-13 years old at the time. If that's something that bothers you for whatever reason, you can skip this chapter without losing much of the plot.  
aftepes.tumblr.com or addytepes on twitter

Felix was asleep in the chair by the infirmary bed where Dimitri woke up. His head had fallen forward, to his chest, body curled up against the cold of the old stone building. He looked so small, tucked into the chair like that. Felix had always been small. Skinny and pale, even with the strength he had now, all that he had shown himself to be capable of, he was still small. Sniffled in his sleep, just like he always had. His arms and chest were bandaged, hair loose and messy and his eyes sunken and dark, but Dimitri still saw that child that had followed him endlessly in those warm summers. Groaning, he tried to sit up. No, that wouldn't work. He could barely move. Had to settle for reaching out. His hand landed on Felix's.

But Felix didn't wake. So Dimitri pushed his luck, and he closed his hand gently around Felix's narrow fingers, feeling the bandages and callouses that came with his constant training. The endless search for strength. Dimitri knew well that drive. His path had followed the dead, he drove himself stronger to silence their voices, while Felix devoted himself to the living. To making sure nothing like that would happen again, not under his watch. Parts of Dimitri that were him screamed with rage, hated himself for letting Felix become this. For chasing him away when all he could hear was the dead that sang for revenge. Dimitri longed to sit up, if only so he could gather Felix into his arms, hold him, wipe away the tracks of tears that had dried on his pale cheeks, rock him gentle the way he used to do when they were children and nightmares would send Felix running across the room to his bed, to seek comfort. The demands of the dead, normally blades in his head that screamed for blood, were quiet, in the face of his hand in Felix's.

Those golden summers of his childhood seemed so far away, and Felix wasn't the tender, sensitive child who had once followed him like a quiet shadow, sniffled, tear filled and genuinely distraught when he wasn't allowed to follow wherever Dimitri went. He even dragged his bedding into Dimitri's room, whenever they were together, and slept there. And when the nightmares came, as they so often did with Felix, Dimitri was always glad to hold him, swaying softly and humming half remembered lullabies until both boys were once again tangled together in sleep.

And inevitably, Ingrid and Sylvain would join them and they would run the fields of the summer palace with their wooden swords and legends of the first kings, wild games that changed roles and rules as often as the whims of the children did. The only constant was Felix playing the right hand, the most precious friend of whichever king Dimitri had nominated himself. They would build tents and lay under the stars, give them names out of their storybooks.

They were just beginning to learn to stop being children that last summer. Sylvain went on and on about the beauty of the young girls in the villages, Ingrid stared at Glenn as he trained with them. And Felix had grown lean, hair loose and messy, his amber eyes fierce when he swung the wooden sword he had so taken to. Felix, lit like the sun in the summer light, he still followed Dimitri around like there was no place he would rather be. And Dimitri felt it, in the pit of his stomach, when Felix dragged his bedding across the hall, laid on the ground and stared at Dimitri like there was no place he would rather be.

When his nightmares struck again, like they did so often, Felix climbed into Dimitri's bed. Like nothing had changed. Like he didn't see Dimitri staring at him while they trained that afternoon. Like his long limbs weren't making Dimitri wonder why this time, of all times, they felt different wrapped around him. Felix nestled into his arms just like he always had, hands closed him his bedshirt, and that was when it changed.

That was when Dimitri moved close. That was when they kissed. Messy and awkward and uncertain, their lips brushed together, once, twice before either one seemed to notice what was going on. Felix smiled, held him close and fell asleep there.

And in the morning they said goodbye to Glenn. To Rodrigue and Lambert. Felix tried to hold on to Dimitri as long as he could, but Dimitri was to join them. His first taste of a real battle, as his father's squire. They gave him a hero's farewell, all the celebration the summer house could manage when they sent their knights to the frontlines at Duscur. He dreamed of those strange, late night summer kisses.

Not of the horrors he was so soon to see. Not of the massacre, not of the blood, of the one Duscur child he would save. The one person he could save.

Who watched him, in the cold infirmary. Ever loyal, Dedue had not left his side even here. Even after five years gone, after the war. After the monster Dimitri had let himself become. As beaten and scarred as he had become, still, he remained.

"Highness, you're awake."

"Shh, Dedue. Felix is still resting."

"I tried to tell him to lie down. He is aggravating his injuries insisting on remaining in that chair." Dedue pointed out.

"You would do the same thing." His dead whispered, and Dimitri gave them voice. Longing to protect one of their own, he could see their shadows looming around Felix. He wondered how close that meant he was coming to death. If the ghosts were waiting to claim him. He wasn't sure who he was talking to. Because he would have done the same thing, had he seen Felix injured like that. Seen Felix fall apart the way he had. Had their dead followed Felix, the way they followed him. 

"He can lay beside me. It used to help him sleep." Dimitri knew that was his own voice. His own person. He wondered if Felix would hate him even more for telling Dedue about his childhood softness, hate him for the way Dedue shifted him, so slow, to lay on his side beside Dimitri.

But Felix didn't wake. Dedue helped Dimitri move the blanket so Felix could rest, curled on his side. And Dimitri tried not to think about the vitriol he would face when Felix woke, vitriol and hate he so well deserved. Felix had seen him for what he was, so long ago. And even now, even here, saved when he shouldn't have been, allowed to recover in the monastery so many of his happier memories rested in, he knew he had fallen so far. Lost his allies, friends and companions, his kingdom in a single pursuit of revenge. A drive, to silence the voices of the dead.

But Felix rested, and so Dimitri took his peace where he could, pulled the blanket so gently over his narrow shoulder, tried to keep his distance. They were children no longer, and that soft summer was as far away as the moon that rose in the infirmary window.


	6. We'll Leave Before our Blood will hit the Floor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This goes back to the warning for gore and violence. Please heed the warning.
> 
> aftepes on tumblr, addytepes on twitter

Felix dreamed. As long as he could remember, he'd had nightmares, dreams of the death that had plagued him for so long. Felix dreamed of the battlefield at Sreng, of the first time he saw Dimitri lose himself to the wild boar he became. The first time he realized someone he so loved was capable of such evil. That Dimitri's rage was taking him over. He dreamed about the blood coating the battlefield, staining Dimitri's blond hair, his shining dark armor. And there was no one to comfort him when he screamed after the battle. There was no one to soothe his tears, no one to tell him it was alright. That death was just the way of things. No way to sleep in the cold cots of the battalion. So Felix would lay on his own, keeping guard outside Dimitri's tent, his cloak pulled up against the snow. And he wouldn't cry.

He would never cry again, he told himself, through the stinging at the backs of his eyes and the anger and the shaking of his shoulders that spoke of a young boy, who wanted to hold his best friend through all the hurt. Even still, he stayed by Dimitri's side and he pretended to hate it. Pretended so hard sometimes he even convinced himself that it was all broken up, that he meant every hard word and every biting cruelty. He turned it on the others, too. If they didn't come close, they couldn't be hurt. He could only protect them from outside of them. If he let them come close, they would make mistakes. Let their emotions get the better of them and he could protect no one.

Better to not have emotions at all. That was what he told himself when he defected, running from a war torn Faerghus, running from his father, from Dimitri's execution, from himself. He ran, and he ran, and he kept running until he couldn't keep going. The same rage, the same feral hatred that had eaten away everyone he'd ever dared to love growing like a living thing swallowing his heart. And in the wavering reality of dreaming it was, and it whispered all the hateful things he had spat at them back at him and he believed every word.

Felix dreamed. He dreamed of a boar hunt, but he was a grown man and the boar wore fine furs and stalked through Garreg Mach, Areadbhar dragging filthy with blood and grime making sparks on the stone steps. The boar growled and spoke words that made no sense to things that were not there. Called him by the names of the dead. _Glenn,_ he said, _Glenn you will be avenged. You did not die for nothing. Glenn,_ he said, _I will kill her for all she took from us._ He took his jaw in one huge hand and he met his eyes and still he saw the dead.

Felix wasn't Glenn. He could never be Glenn. He was just a poor replacement for a true knight. A crybaby turned feral and cruel. He stalked the cold, broken halls of Garreg Mach, hunting a boar he could never kill.

And Dimitri dreamed. He dreamed of Duscur, of watching the massacre. An attack on the king, Dimitri sitting in the carriage with his spear clutched in his hands when the first attack came. And the first attack was the worst. An axe, unexpected and brutal, thrown right through the head of the king. Dimitri didn't quite know what happened, even as it all hit him, blood splattering across his face. Bits of gore, brain and skull and mess. And for too long, as the battle broke out around him, Dimitri just stared. Just stared, clutching his spear, unmoving, as Glenn shoved him into the supply cart, slammed the door closed. He could hear the screams, bloody and wet and desperate. He heard the anger, the clang of swords, the cries of horses cut down.

Dimitri dreamed he was on the snow covered field and he was watching them die. He was watching Glenn, his sword brandished, throwing the attackers away from the cart where he had hidden Dimitri. Taking wound after wound and the healers couldn't keep up with all the slaughter. Wyvern riders with huge axes, calling the names of the Duscur gods, praising them as they targeted the healers, took them down. When Dimitri dreamed he watched them die. Heard them calling out for their king, heard them crying for Dimitri _Why didn't you save us? Why couldn't you save anyone at all?_

Dimitri stepped out of the cart into the filthy red snow. In his dream he was tall, grown, and his cloak swept through the snow, soaking the ends in bloody mess. In the dream he shoved his spear through each of the dying as they called for him. Indiscriminate, he slaughtered friend and foe alike in his dream, the innocent of Duscur who had been killed in the wake of the attack. Genocide, Felix had called it, when he raged at the soldiers carrying out the orders. Genocide. An entire people gone, to avenge the king.

Glenn placed his hand on the end of Areadbhar, helped Dimitri shove it through his chest just as he had helped him kill the boar so long ago. Met his eyes, and told him he had done well.

"He died a good death," Rodrigue had said, when Dimitri cried for his friend. "A noble death. It's the best any of us can hope for, Prince Dimitri."

And he comforted Dimitri, even when he couldn't bring himself to comfort his own son. And Dimitri heard Felix crying, when Rodrigue and the others fussed over Dimitri and gave him all the comfort he could, attended to him and wiped his tears, they neglected the other boy, left alone with his tears and his poor dead brother.

Felix woke, searching for the boar in his dreams. And his hands fell on freshly cleaned bandages, strong, scarred muscle curled around him. The strange sweet smell of healing magic fading from the air and antiseptic to prevent infection.

Dimitri's arms around him. His breath, deep and even in sleep against the back of Felix's shoulder. He shifted as he dreamed, holding Felix closer. Tighter, like he could protect him. His hands were rough with callouses where he touched the bare skin around Felix's bandage, huge, one hand covered his shoulder blades and pulled him close. Felix was helpless against his strength, his strength and the affection he still felt building up in his chest.

It had been near ten years since anyone held him like that. He felt the familiar burn at the back of his eyes as tears gathered, and he didn't have it in him to bite them back. And he found he could move, turned around, slow, his ribs and his back ached with the wounds that were still healing, but he could turn to face Dimitri, and to bury his face so no one could see him cry save for a sleeping boar.


	7. I couldn't Utter my Love when it Counted

3\. Felix

"Professor Manuela says you should be up and at 'em again in a few days." Sylvan pushed the lunch tray at him, spicy noodles heaped with barbecued fish, fresh caught, thanks to Byleth's not-so-small obsession with the fishing pond. A meal Felix loved, but he didn't have the heart to eat.

Dimitri hadn't woken for more than a couple minutes at a time, and never while Felix was also conscious.

"I should have healed by now." Felix bit out.

"Yeah, well, the Adrestians had poisoned arrows. And you took like thirty of them." Sylvain scrubbed his hands over his face. "You and Dimitri barely made it out of there. Thought we lost you for a day or so." The last part was whispered, aching.

Felix touched his hand. It was the most he was willing to give. He was trying, Goddess knew he was trying. Trying to stop holding back, to show some kind of affection, Stop biting the hands who reached out to help. He touched Sylvain's hand, a gesture of gratitude, kindness.

"I'm not going anywhere until you do. We promised, remember?" Felix folded his fingers with Sylvain's, squeezed his hand just once. Like they did when they were children, little reassurances, gestures of care quietly offered. Kindness. What he thought he might have lost in those five years. Maybe he had lost it even before. Maybe it had just been another thing he had lost in Duscur.

It wasn't as though he hadn't found DImitri. He had, once. That had been what pushed him away. Dimitri, buried in the monastery, a heaving, hurting thing, more beast than man, prowling the halls where once he had thought to be happy. And for a few days, Felix watched him. A Fraldarius always helped the rightful king of Faerghus, after all. Their right hands. Their swords and their soldiers. He watched Dimitri hunt rats and cook them over hot coals, steal food from the storage and camps that had set up. Growl at the ghosts that plagued him. If he saw Felix, he didn't. Just saw Glenn, like everyone else did.

Saw him once shed his armor like a snack shedding skin, his huge, grotesque coat pooled on the floor and he stepped into the pond, cool water washing over his scarred skin, cleaning it of blood and dirt and filth. He was a mess, massive in his raw, animal strength, broken and marked with scars and burns and places where things had healed all wrong, the stains healing magic left behind when it wasn't done quite right. He dunked his head in the water, rinsing his overgrown, golden blond hair clean of all that he had gone through, and splashed back up. Blissfully, beautifully nude. Goddess above, but Dimitri was beautiful. The strength of a true king and the color of the sun, even his badly stitched together missing eye only proved that he could survive the impossible. Strong features belied a tenderness Felix kept trying to forget he had. Calloused hands Felix tried not to imagine on his skin. Bowed lips, a slightly crooked smile he remembered all too well in dreams he pretended he didn't have. Dreams where they would, flushed and sweating from a good fight, lay in the dirt, gasping for breath and their hands would find each other. Their lips would find each other.

Dreams where they would push at loose training clothing, callouses scratching on skin as they felt each other's scars and their strength. Kissing like they fought, all pushes and bites and the edge of pain, reminders that they were warriors, through and through. But in his dreams Dimitri would win the fight, and he would loom over Felix and those blue eyes, the color of the ocean and the ice and everything Felix had ever wanted, would darken and he would smile that genuine, slightly crooked smile of their youth and he would touch Felix's face with such fondness he would forget he had ever wanted to hate him.

Undressing would be slower after that, in the dreams he pretended he didn't have, helping each other out of loose shirts and the black pants they used for training, touching, kissing every bit of skin they revealed. Felix would leave little bites, he couldn't keep the sharpness even out of his shows of affection, and each one would draw a sigh from Dimitri, a little tenseness in his hands on Felix's skin. In these dreams they were younger men, at the Academy and not as wounded, and Dimitri sighed his name, _Felix, Felix, oh Fe,_ and his kisses would turn to panting little bites at the column of his throat as the heat between their bodies pressed so close together grew and grew and grew.

And Dimitri's hands would be so beautifully rough on his overheated skin, callouses catching pebbled nipples, teasing them until Felix pleaded for more. He hadn't known, he didn't know how to react. Not the first couple of times those dreams came.

And when he saw him, this broken king without a country, without a crown, bathing in the pool at the ruins of Garreg Mach, all those dreams hit him full force. And he wanted. Felix never wanted. But oh, oh Goddess above he wanted. He had to steel his nerves, had to remind himself he hated the boar. He hated everything had become. Hated him for taking Glenn away, hated him for taking his father and turning him such that he could hardly look at Felix. Hated him for the ghosts and the rage and the blood and everything he was.

And so Felix ran. Ran and ran all the way to Alliance territory, ran away from home and from the boar and from everything he knew. At least Claude and Professor Byleth had been good enough to take him in. Sylvain was already there, the Gautier territories had sent help to the Alliance and Sylvain had gone to lead them. Ashe had defected, along with Mercedes, had been helping the Alliance since before the war even broke out. Annette, with soldiers from Dominic, hadn't been far behind Sylvain. But he knew. They had fled. Forced to believe Dimitri had been executed, faced with declaring loyalty to Cordelia, they fled. Just like Felix had. Only they had the dignity to rally help, to bring soldiers. Felix just ran. Because he knew it wouldn't have been that easy to kill a boar and he had to find Dimitri.

And then he had to leave him. Because that wasn't his Dimitri.

"Yeah, we promised. Stay together until we die together." Sylvain grinned. He let his shoulder knock against Felix, his easy smile back on his face like it had never left. "You're not allowed to go without me."

And now here he was, the most he had felt at home anywhere since those far away days at the summer palace. With Sylvain beside him, he just had to wait for Dimitri to wake up. Had to know if this was his king, or just another boar. Felix didn't want to run again. 

"I wouldn't dare." Felix teased right back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aftepes on tumblr and addytepes on twitter~


	8. When I thought that Suffering was something Profound

Felix couldn't sleep. He could hardly walk, doing more than crossing the infirmary took assistance. Still, Mercedes told him when she brought coffee in the morning, he was recovering. Sylvain liked to take him meals, sitting on the bed with him and talking. Telling him what it was like integrating with the Alliance forces. Claude was a kind leader, he said, whip smart and always scheming. Used his generals and their forces better even than Dimitri had sometimes. He said they had even taken on a few Adrestian refugees, old classmates, promised he would make sure they all got to plan, to train, to work together once Felix was healed. Said Claude wanted to work out a peace treaty between Faerghus and the Alliance once Dimitri was well and they could take the Kingdom back.

"That's a tall order, with the Empire still advancing. And from what I heard Cordelia has all but turned the land over to them."

"Yeah. But we have to hope for something, right?"

"We have to fight for something." Felix nodded, picking at his food. 

But for most of the day, he was alone. Unable to help, unable to fight, unable to do much beyond sitting in the window, watching the others. Trying to remember the names of the people he had known in the academy, now leaders and generals of this army, this ragtag bunch of refugees, misfits and the Leicester nobility who had taken them in. It was part of this attempt at peace, attempt at softening, that he wanted to remember their names. Before the Gronder battle, before this injury, he had hardly tried. These people had saved him, they brought him in. The least he could do was remember their names.

But there was nothing to do after the lights had fallen. And he couldn't sleep. The dim candle had been left by Dimitri's bed, when Dedue had come to check on him, and he had forgotten, or neglected, to bring it back to Felix's bedside. Likely it simply hadn't occurred to him. It had nothing to do with how elegant, how soft Dimitri looked in the candlelight. With the flickering orange of the flame, Dimitri's hair was pure gold, the harsh edges of sharp cheekbones softened, scarred skin smoothed. Felix forced himself to his feet, the movement ached with the poison that still worked through his body. He hated to think what it would be like to get out on the training grounds again. How much he had lost being trapped in this place for so long.

Slow, he made his way across the infirmary, he still remembered which steps creaked, he could move slow, but silent to Dimitri's side. To the chair he spent so much of these dull days in, waiting for his king to wake. Standing vigil. Like a knight in one of those stupid fucking stories he had loved as a child, when Glenn read to him. He sunk into it, his legs tired from even such a short trip.

Dimitri smiled at him.

DImitri, awake. Dimitri, with one pristine blue eye, soft, his smile so kind, like Felix's face was the only one he wanted to see in that moment. Felix looked away under the genuine emotion in that smile.

"You're awake." He tried not to sound like the relief that was flooding through him.

"Am I? This isn't a cruelly pleasant dream?"

Felix scoffed. "Only you would think a pleasant dream is cruel. No, this is the waking world, boar. Or we've both died and my punishment for my sins is an infirmary room with only you for company."

"Punishment for you seems paradise for me." Dimitri's teasing voice was so endlessly gentle, just like he had remembered, when Dimitri had fondly called him a silly child for following Dimitri, his tiny shadow, constant companion.

Felix looked at him. Really looked at him. Looked at the scars peeking from the eyepatch, his hair, messy from the pillow he was propped on, though Manuela and Marianne and Mercedes had cleaned him, wrapped his woulds and cleaned the grime and gore from his skin. Left him half bared, in nothing but bandages and pajama pants, and there were those bits of skin revealed, scars and trained muscles and Felix wanted to touch. He didn't. He fidgeted his fingers and he watched Dimitri. Watched him swallow around words he didn't speak.

"If you want to say something, boar, i'll listen."

"Then this is paradise." Dimitri looked at him, and it felt like he was really looking at Felix, just the way Felix had looked at him. Idly, Felix wondered what he saw. Pale skin, sunken eyes, messy hair and every bit as many scars as Dimitri had. What a pair they made.

"You saved me, didn't you?" Dimitri began, reaching out to touch Felix's hand. "At Gronder. That was you, who covered me. That's why you're here. Their arrows got you."

Felix looked away. "I wasn't going to let you die. It wouldn't be right."

"That's not what you said in the academy. Not what you say."

"What I say?"

"When I'm awake and the you in my head joins the ghosts. You tell me you let me die. That the boar won and there is nothing human left of me. It feels so real."

"Well it's not, so push it out of your head. Don't let your damned ghosts speak for me."

Dimitri let out a small chuckle. "Now that you're speaking to me, they can't steal your voice."

"Then I have to keep talking." But there were all the things he couldn't say. He couldn't voice his longing, how badly he wanted to touch Dimitri's hand, how badly he wanted back that strange morning when he had woken tucked up against Dimitri's chest, his arm around him, his face tucked into Felix's hair. How long he had just laid there, breathing Dimitri in, reminding himself that they had lived. That Dimitri could be saved. He had to believe Dimitri could be saved. He couldn't tell him. Too much distance. Too much hate. But never for Dimitri. He hated all the things that came between them. Hated Duscur and the Empire for plotting the massacre. Hated Glenn, because his ghost would not let Dimitri be. He couldn't tell Dimitri he had never hated him at all.

"Please." Dimitri was the one to reach for his hand. And Felix had to take it, turned his hand over so he could fold his fingers with Dimitri's. To feel the callouses from their training, from all the battles they had fought together and apart. He looked down at their hands, connected, and he didn't hate Dimitri. He scrubbed his thumb over Dimitri's knuckles, as if he could soothe the pain with a simple touch.

It wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough until there was no space between them. Until the ire and the resentment was washed away with the closeness Felix hadn't known in almost a decade.

He forgot to bite back when Dimitri reached over, tucked a strand of dark hair over his ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> addytepes on twitter and aftepes on tumblr if you want to chat~


	9. And I Hope that I don't Fall in Love with You

It wasn't worth biting at the boar anymore. He had enough ghosts. Enough self loathing for the both of them. There had been enough bloodshed. He didn't need to add to that. It didn't mean he had to be kind, but he did soften his edges.

Dimitri pushed a strand of Felix's hair behind his ear, his fingers brushed down the skin of his jaw. Felix moved into it, he gave in, let his head tilt into the gentle touch, tried to memorize the feeling of the callouses on his bare skin, the warmth of his fingertips. It wasn't as though he thought he would be allowed this touch again.

It had been the night before they left for Duscur. They meaning everyone but him, Felix was deemed still too small to serve even as a squire. Dima was going, his first real battle. His father's squire, his first bit of real training. Dimitri had been so proud that afternoon, swinging his spear and announcing how joyous his first battle would be. How they would sing songs of praise for centuries to come. He'd beamed with his childish happiness, swinging Felix and Ingrid and Sylvain each into uncoordinated dances and promised them places in the army he was so certain he would soon lead. They would be heroes, Dimitri had promised. They all would.

But you needed a war to be a soldier. And Dimitri got his war.

That was for sunrise, but for the night they had time together. Felix slept where he always did, on the floor of Dimitri's room. It was the only place he wanted to be in those summers, following in his king's shadow, games and mock battles and training and the way Dimitri was growing lean, growing strong, golden and ice blue and beautiful. Felix hadn't known what to call that stir in his belly that riled him warm when he looked at Dimitri, but he hoped it never went away. It reminded him a little of the way Ingrid was starting to talk about Glenn, but that couldn't be right. Dimitri was a boy. Like him. Boys weren't supposed to make him flutter and wonder what it would be like to kiss like they did in the stories.

Felix curled into his blankets on the floor and he watched the moonlight make Dimitri look like the stars themselves. Dimitri was talking, quiet, wondering aloud what Duscur would be like. If he would see real battle. If he would make his father proud. And on impulse, Felix climbed into the bed beside him, like they always had, and they talked about the trip, about becoming knights together, what it might be like when Dimitri was king and Felix was at his right hand. Dimitri's hand found his waist. Felix's eyes found Dimitri's.

His first kiss. So far, his best kiss.

Unpracticed and messy, they bumped noses, his teeth caught Dimitri's lower lip, they laughed in silent shakes of their shoulders, clutching each other's arms. They kissed again, grinning too hard for it to be more than a simple press together and they fell asleep in each other's arms. He could rest easy, in Dimitri held him, no fear and no nightmares, no death. Nothing but the warm sunshine fresh grass smell of Dimitri in their summer home.

He never saw his Dima again. What came back from Duscur was a monster. A beast, a wild boar that spoke to the dead and ached for blood.

He looked at Felix, and he called him by his brother's name. And Felix hated Glenn so much then, his sainted dead brother. The true knight. The one Dimitri really wanted near. It was the first time he hit Dimitri out of anger, and it wouldn't be the last.

He buried his head in the pillow that still smelled like him, like sunshine and the fresh grass of the summer palace, and he cried until all he could do was sniffle, dry and aching. Screamed until his throat was raw and no one heard him. All he could hear, all he could see was the way Dimitri looked at him and saw someone else, his tear choked aching whisper, _Glenn I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

_Your brother was a good man,_ they said. _A true knight, a hero._

And he hated each and every single one of them. He hated the people who looked at him and saw Glenn's shadow, who saw a pale imitation of the perfect knight they had lost in Duscur. He hated every single simpering insincere "I'm sorry" that passed their lips when they didn't see Felix at all. Some days he even hated Glenn.

He didn't hate Glenn just then. He didn't hate anything at all. He dared to think that this was happiness, with Dimitri's fingers tracing down his jaw, his one eye searching Felix's face. For what, he didn't know. For fear, possibly, for anger or for regret or anything that might turn Dimitri away. His fingertip found Felix's lower lip, traced, barely a whisper of a touch. But that broke the floodgates. Tears pooled in Felix's eyes, he brought his hands up, touched Dimitri in return, brushed against his messy blonde hair. Touched over his missing eye against the crooked black stitches. He couldn't meet Dimitri's eyes.

Dimitri saw him.

He didn't see anything else, he didn't see ghosts or blood or regret. He saw Felix, and there was no hesitation in his eyes. Felix wondered if it was quiet in his mind. If his dead were still there crying for revenge, or if they had gone quiet. Like Felix's anger had gone quiet. Like everything was quiet in the warmth of this one single moment. This moment, the gentle touch, the way Dimitri stared at him like he was the entire world.

The way Dimitri kissed him.

The way he hadn't learned how to kiss in the time since they were young. He pressed his lips to Felix's, like he was expecting something magical, hope in his ice blue eyes. Felix wanted to scoff, wanted to call him an idiot for thinking just pressing his lips against Felix's was going to change anything. He really didn't know how to kiss.

So Felix had to teach him. Tilted his head to press their lips together more firmly, tongue flicking out to touch at Dimitri's lower lip and he smiled at Dimitri's small sound of shock. Used the moment to deepen the kiss, his hands coming up to pull Dimitri gently closer. Keep kissing him. Because now that he had started, Felix didn't want to stop. If he stopped, he might lose Dimitri again. Like the last time they'd kissed and he had lost everything. Felix didn't think he could bear that again.

So he didn't stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know if you traced all my song references through my chapter titles you'd have a very decent indie playlist.  
tumblr: aftepes twitter: addytepes


	10. Forgive me, Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These boys are trying to heal and moving entirely too fast, aren't they? aftepes on tumblr, addytepes on twitter

4\. Dimitri

Felix kissed him. Felix. Kissed him. Felix, cruel and callous and uncaring Felix, whose words bit harder than any animal, cut deeper than any sword, leaned over him, hands cradling his head to move him so he could kiss him deep, breath on his skin and fingers threaded in his hair.

Dimitri didn't bother to tell him that the last time he had been kissed was that night before Duscur. He figured Felix could tell. Could sense his hesitance, his clumsiness, fear of messing this all up. Because if he lost Felix again, what would he have left? 

His hand settled on the back of Felix's head when they parted, and he met his eyes, tilted to seek them again when Felix looked away. He knew Felix hated meeting people's eyes, hated what he saw there, but Dimitri had to know. Had to look for regret, or hesitation, or even anger. But he found none of those things. Just a deep, profound sadness. An ache in Felix's amber gaze that went straight to Dimitri's heart.

"What is it, Fe?"

"I'm just going to lose you again." Felix whispered, an honesty that went past the brutal, cruel truths he so often spoke. 

"You don't have to." Dimitri tried to soothe him, brushed fingers through his dark, messy hair, kissed his cheek.

"But I will. Nothing is solved. So you survived that battle. So you're not growling instead of speaking, you might even actually see _me_ for a change instead of my saintly dead brother. But Edelgard is still alive, Faerghus is gone to the fucking dogs and the only hope we have left for winning even a piece of this shit show in the hands of the Alliance and our old teacher. What have we actually done besides awkwardly fucking make out in an infirmary bed?" Felix sat back, staring Dimitri down.

And he didn't have an answer for him. Felix, as usual, was right. Spiteful and abrasive about it, but he was right.

Dimitri reached for his hand. "We have a chance, I think."

Felix didn't let him take it. "I'm going to call for Mercedes. Maybe I can get some help and go back to my old dorm room. I can walk well enough to help myself now, I don't need to be here anymore."

"And me? Where does that leave us?"

"With too many ghosts between us."

"There doesn't have to be." Dimitri pushed, caught his hand and held it tight. "You push those ghosts away, Felix. Please."

"I can't. I'm not strong enough to get rid of them for you. You spent _years_ fighting for them. Caught up in all of those dead things like if you spilled enough blood you could bring them back. Fuck, Dimitri, how often did you look at me and see someone else?" Felix tried to pull his hand away.

Dimitri didn't let him. But he couldn't answer him either. No one wanted to admit to it. Glenn hadn't left him. But Glenn was dead and he hated how much no one had seen Felix shattered in his wake. But even Dimitri hadn't managed to look past the ghosts. He was no better than everyone who had ignored Felix.

"I wish I had." He forced out, finally. "I wish I had seen you."

He wished he had seen Felix, seen his pain, see the way he lashed out at anyone else to avoid his own hurt, the cruelty he used to hide his own anguish. He wished he had been able to soothe his sadness, to talk to him about what happened, what they could do to make things right again. He wished he had seen Felix in those long years, so he could have been there for him. But Felix wouldn't even look at him.

Dimitri didn't let go of his hand, he knew it was wrong to keep him there, to force Felix to stay by his side, but he needed to get this out in the open. And after all, they had just kissed. More than once. Felix had responded to the kiss, enjoyed the kiss or so it seemed. But now, he was trying to push away once more. Dimitri didn't know if he could handle that.

Felix looked down, his hand relaxed, curled in Dimitri's. "You wouldn't have liked what you saw."

"What does that matter? It's you."

"Stop being so sentimental, boar." But he said it without malice. With even the hint of a smile. He wanted this, or so it looked to Dimitri. He wanted to be around Dimitri, as much as he could tell.

So Dimitri reached across the small space between them, to touch Felix's cheek, brush fingers down his jaw. Watched Felix tilt into the touch, watched the turmoil in his expression. Dimitri wished he knew how to soothe that, bring Felix back into his arms. Dimitri longed to kiss him again, but he didn't know how to ask.

What he did know was that his mind had been silent. The ghosts faded to nothing, not even whispers. No flickering images on the edges of his vision. Just Felix. Just this. Just the places where they connected, his fingers on Felix's jaw, tilting to make him look.

He didn't have to ask. Felix kissed him again, slower, a trace of tongue, a hand at the back of his neck, fingers tracing the skin. Dimitri shuddered. He hadn't imagined that would feel as good as it did, but Dimitri shuddered, despite himself, gasped. Allowed Felix to deepen the kiss, coaxing his mouth open and taking, pushing the kiss past chaste, into something that made Dimitri warm deep inside. Made him pull Felix closer, closer until he stumbled, had to lean on the infirmary bed, into Dimitri's space. So Dimitri could wrap his arms around him.

Hold Felix, like he hadn't been allowed to do in so long. Bundled him into his arms, smoothed his hair back, kissed his cheeks, his forehead.

"I missed you, boar." Felix whispered, clutching too tight to Dimitri. "Don't go away again."


	11. Quiet Little Monsters Creep into your Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We return to the warning for violence, and in this one, blood gore and hallucinations. You know, the usual. No, actually, this one might be particularly horrific. aftepes on tumblr and addytepes on twitter.

Felix asked him where he had been those five long years after he was executed. Where he had gone. What had become of him. Dedue had pushed Dimitri out of the city, hidden in a crowd of Duscur refugees who promised to get Dedue out of Fhirdiad as well. Dimitri had to trust them. And he'd seen Dedue in the monastery, seen him talking to the others. He had survived. 

Five years. Dimitri was still making sense of that. He'd been gone five years. Where _had_ he gone? He hadn't been aware of it all. Time had been meaningless, those long years. Wandering the wilds in Faerghus at first, he'd felt the wild boar Felix had called him. Filthy and starving he'd hunted for food, a wild, snarling, growling thing with nothing but his dead to guide him.

_To Enbarr,_ they coaxed, _Rip her head from her shoulders and offer it to our graves._

Cordelia had burned the graveyard where Glenn, where his father, where everyone lay buried. He was supposed to lay beside them. He had nowhere to offer her blood as penance. Just a growing list of people who had to die to appease them, silence their voices.

So he walked, dragging himself when the starvation picked at his bones, wrapping his wounds as best he could, days and nights. Sometimes he heard soldiers, or hunters or bandits on the main road and he fled from their sounds, signs of life, like the animal he was. Heard snippets and whispers, never sure if it was the dead or the living or his own mind trying to make sense of it all. 

When the wilds warmed he knew he was close. He started to see more soldiers, camps of them along the main roads and he learned to travel at night, to cover his tracks, dirt over the sparse fires he would light so the meat he killed wouldn't make him sick. He learned to avoid the sounds of life that swirled around the roads, to seek the forests even when they grew sparse. He didn't know if he even looked human anymore when he started to recognize the flags of the Adrestian Empire. He knew he didn't feel human. It had been too long since he had dared utter a sound, his throat scratched hoarse and useless. The claws of his gauntlets were covered in mud, in gore, in filth. His hair matted, his skin caked with filth. When he found the emperor on her throne, what would kill her would look a wild thing, feral and growling.

The thing Felix always knew he was.

He found the monastery, ruined and gutted. Somewhere to stay. To plan. So he wasn't quite so far gone when he stabbed his lance through her heart. He needed to see it. To remember it. He needed to be whole and aware and he needed to know, needed to look into her eyes and see her die. See the moment she realized who was her death.

So he had to stay in the ruins of the monastery that had been his home. One of the only places he had ever really felt he had a home. A place where he thought he might once have been able to grow. Change, find his humanity again.

He came to it less human than he had ever been. A feral beast from the wastelands of a broken country, he took the monastery as his home. Broke down the wall so he had somewhere to sleep away from the rain that poured down on Garreg Mach. Rats were food enough, stolen vegetables from the few who remained nearby. It wasn't as though the flavor mattered, either way.

He paced the halls, he spoke to his ghosts as they tried to tell him _Keep going, keep going you're so close._

_As you remain, she gathers strength._

_She will kill them all if she realizes you live. Kill them to get to you._

And in the dark nights he saw their bodies, and the bodies of the living he was letting die as he stayed. He saw Felix, splayed out over the altar, impaled on the Empire's spears and his bloodied mouth opened, he lifted his head, an arrow through his eye, blood pouring out of the wound with each grotesque, exposed heart beat.

_You let us all die, boar. You needed to know your revenge so badly and in your wait she killed us all._

He sat up, along the spear that held him to the altar, everything that was Felix dripping out behind him, gore and guts spilling like a sacrifice. And when he stood fully the spear pulled away and Dimitri could see his still heart. Felix, dead, Felix, just another of his ghosts.

_You need to let them go. They don't call for death. You do. You ache for it like a lover. You let us die to satisfy your bloodlust._

Dimitri stopped sleeping. He ate only for necessity. He threw himself into the water by the greenhouse just to feel something, anything. To wash the pain from his skin. Everything was hollow, everything was haunted. He slept in the cathedral, as if being closer to Sothis would help, but the ghost of a Felix who didn't exist mocked him from his altar. 

_Just like a boar, filthy and starving. Like that will make you better._

His Felix was alive. His Felix found him and he didn't see him. He saw the dead thing, he saw Glenn. He saw bloody eyeless faces matted with dark hair, dragging limbs and entrails like chains that bound them to Dimitri, demanding blood spilled in penance for blood already spilled, so many years ago.

Felix asked him where he had been, those five long years, and he struggled to answer. Felix brushed his hair away from his face, and he told him it didn't matter. That hadn't been Dimitri. That had been the wild boar that replaced him. Dimitri was here, now, with Felix sitting on the bed beside him, tracing his features, the stitches where he had to sew his own empty eye socket closed.

"And if the boar prince comes back," Felix promised, kissing over the heavy black stitches with a gentle affection Dimitri just barely remembered, "I'll kill him myself."

Dimitri wrapped his arms around Felix's waist, drew him close. "You're the only person I would trust to do it."

"Then it's a promise. If you go away from me again, I'll hunt the boar, and I'll kill him."

"Even should it mean my death?"

"Even should it mean your death. There is no living if you lose yourself to the boar again. No living for either of us."


	12. No one Laughs at God in a War

"Manuela says one of the arrows notched your spine. Walking's going to be hard for a while. If you manage to walk at all." Claude told him.

Felix was gone. He'd been gone two days now, disappeared one morning when Dimitri woke. Dedue said he was on the training grounds. Trying to work through whatever it was he needed to work through. Injuries, emotions, all the things that raged in Felix, scarred him and made him cruel.

Dimitri didn't know how to react to Claude's words. He hadn't tried to stand since he woke in Garreg Mach, but a lot of things had changed since then. He felt more peaceful. His dead were quieter, called less for blood. They were still there. It was likely they always would be. And Dimitri couldn't exactly outrun them if he could barely stand. But he had suffered enough, and lived through it. This was just another trial. Another thing he had to suffer through to make his victory worthwhile.

And now Claude sat at his bedside. Claude, the hero of the war. The savior of the Alliance. Who offered him life, a home, when Dimitri hardly deserved it. Scarcely deserved anything at all, much less the welcome he was offered by the man uniting Fodlan. 

"But anyways you're here now. That's got to count for something, right?"

Dimitri nodded, but he didn't know if it did. What good was a lame king? For that matter, a lame king without a country, trapped by the kindness of another ruler. Seeing death in the shadows, calling to him, beckoning. The gentle, cold touch of his lost loved ones.

Claude didn't seem to notice how lost Dimitri was.

"I think the only people who know you're awake are me, Manuela, Mercedes, Dedue and Felix. Unless they told someone, and they didn't seem keen on the idea. So, at your pace, you know."

"You didn't have to take me in. It'll be harder to unite Fodlan with someone like me still alive."

"Depends on what you want out of this."

"I want peace. Isn't that enough?"

"Not anymore. Whole world is all upended. We need to build something new. But I won't bombard you with ideas now, you're still recovering. We'll talk about politics later."

Dimitri nodded. Claude was right, of course he was. If they all wanted the same thing, peace could be made. Perhaps the old systems of nobility, of reliance on Crests and birthrights, could be dismantled into something better. But they could discuss that later, that Claude was right about as well. Dimitri was still in the infirmary, and unsure if he'd walk properly for some time.

"Have you seen Felix?" Dimitri chanced. Two days was not long to go without seeing him, but their last conversation had not exactly been kind.

"What do you want of me, boar?" Felix had asked. They'd been sharing an afternoon meal, but Dimitri couldn't tear his eyes away from Felix's hands, long, nimble, calloused fingers that broke apart the bread roll, eating in small bites. The pink tone of his lips, so soft in the few kisses he had allowed.

"Your closeness. Is it too much to ask?"

"Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I look at you and I still see the monster."

Dimitri was accustomed to Felix's often cruel honesty. He had come to expect that he didn't get a name, just boar, that Felix's words could cut as sharp as his sword. Still, he looked away. He had to. He had asked for too much. Pushed Felix too far.

And he hadn't seen Felix again. But it was only two days. Just two days. Felix had disappeared for far longer in the past. He tried to convince himself not to be concerned. That there was nothing to be concerned over. But be couldn't help the sinking in his gut, the way the empty infirmary bed seemed to scream at him _Just another thing you ruined._

_Another person you ruined._

_Another life that will never be same. That you broke._

Dimitri shook his head.

"Yeah. Seen him in the training grounds, destroying everything, like usual." Claude shrugged. "We don't have enough money to keep replacing the training dummies, you know."

"I know. On top of everything else, war is expensive."

Claude barked out a mirthful laugh. "Damn right."

"One day, though. When you win this, we'll have enough money to deal with Felix's more destructive tendencies."

Claude only laughed again. This time less spiteful. "I think by then it will be your problem, not mine, your kingliness. You can drag him back to Faerghus when we take it back."

"When. Were that I had your optimism."

"Come with me. See the sun. See what we've done so far." Claude encouraged.

He helped Dimitri into a wheeled chair, pushed him out of the infirmary into the sunlight. It was a cold light, the wind biting at him almost as much as the shame of being pushed about like an invalid. That corner of the monastery was blessedly empty in the middle of the afternoon, and Dimitri allowed his head to fall back, let the sunlight touch his face. He dozed, and dreamed of happier days. When it was warm enough that they would take their sparring matches outside, in the grass by their classroom. Training swords and wooden spears, no need for anything more than padding to avoid injuries. When Felix would let his coldness slip, smile at Dimitri. When he would hear the laughter of others and join in, and he was able to put his thoughts of blood, the voices, his dead, aside. Able to care for the living.

"Highness." Dedue's voice.

"You needn't address me so formally, my friend. I hardly have a country to call my own."

"You are my king all the same." Dedue sat in a chair beside him, relaxed. "Lord Von Riegan had to attend to some things with the war effort. I told him I would be glad to keep you company."

"Could you tell me how things are, outside my room?"

"We are at war, highness. I believe you know what that means. But there are pockets of happiness to be found, even here. Especially here."

Dimitri looked over at him. "You, my friend, speak of happiness? Then I know Lord Von Riegan has done something right with this place."

"He has created something that feels right. And he speaks of opening borders, creating peace. He sounds like you, in your more hopeful times." Dedue told him.

Dimitri didn't know how to answer that.

"I'd like to see Felix again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aftepes on tumblr, addytepes on twitter
> 
> Follow me for ramblings and the legend of Hubert's Poisoned Death Roomba, coming soon.


	13. Fools gonna fall and raise another Fallen Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodrigue may not have been a good father, but Felix is not a good son either. Warning for fucked up familial relationships.

4\. Felix

He swung, taking the head clean off a training dummy, sending it spiraling into the air. Darted back, attacked again, fast, practiced elegant movements that were as innate to him as breathing. The magic that surged up his arm had been hard won, a skill he still had to practice, to think on and draw out of himself, but catching the spiraling cloth head midair, watching it shatter to pieces under his attack, was satisfaction enough.

He tried to chase the thoughts from his head, the heated kisses he'd shared with Dimitri. The way those arms, stronger than he could have imagined, felt around him. For the first time since Duscur, Felix had felt safe. Felt protected, warm, wanted. He hadn't been alone. It was a weakness he couldn't keep, if he wanted to be able to protect them. It wasn't something that could stay. And the chasm he had built between himself and his king was too wide to cross, even with his arms outstretched, even with Dimitri there to catch him.

But he couldn't chase away his own turbulent emotions, even with another swing of his sword, even when he threw the sword aside in favor of gauntlets so he could battle up close, beat and rip and tear as if any of it could push his thoughts away, clear the tears from his eyes. Dimitri's warmth, the breathing, beating heart of him under Felix's hands as their lips brushed down cheeks, over lips, finding places along their throats that made them shudder, gasp, bring each other ever closer. How much further he wanted to go, all the things he wanted to do. The only person who had ever drawn such longing from him, though not the only person he had taken to his bed. Glad for it, because it meant he could meet Dimitri's inexperience and teach him to make love.

He tossed the broken training dummy to the side with a curse and a kick, stabbed his sword through it. He'd destroy them all at this rate, and then what would he have to work with? So he grabbed a training lance, began to work through forms he'd never quite mastered, always slightly clumsy with the long spear, inelegant. Nothing like a sword in his hand. Not like the magic that had begun to thrum through him innately. But that was what practice was for. He had to master the weapons, in case it was the only thing he had. And practice was the only thing that might stand a chance of clearing his head, though the droplets of sweat that trickled down the back of his neck were Dimitri's fingertips, pushing his hair away from his face made him long for someone else's touch, he missed his sparring partner, the way Dimitri used to smile, careless when they trained together in this same room and he'd almost convinced even himself he hated it.

He threw the lance and watched it lodge into the wall too close to someone he wanted to see even less than the boar.

He'd heard Rodrigue had been traveling with Dimitri's small army. But since he had been in the infirmary, keeping to himself and speaking to as few as he could, he'd not had the misfortune of seeing his estranged father. The man who had abandoned him to raise a boar, worshiped and admired by the kingdom. But if there wasn't a kingdom, there was no one left to admire a man who thought a crown more important than the family he left to rot.

"Felix. Strong as ever, I see." His father tried for false platitudes, to say what his son wanted to hear.

"Get out. I'm training."

"Then perhaps you would indulge me in a sparring session." Rodrigue reached for the lance jammed into a crack in the wall.

"Fine." Felix looked away, and took his sword from the pile of training dummies. "If it'll shut you up."

"I had heard you'd offered your services to the Alliance." Rodrigue began as he settled into position, lance perfectly weighted in both hands. "I'm glad to see you back with your king."

"I'd believed him dead. Where was I supposed to go?" Felix bit out, as the first clash of their weapons rang through his ears.

"If you'd spoken to us you would have known. We needed you to stay, to help fight Cordelia." Rodrigue had always hidden his disappointment well, this time disguising it with a low sweep, one Felix had to tumble back to dodge.

"So says the man who cannot be bothered to notify his own son that there is a plan in place to fight the inevitable." Felix charged him.

"Felix. I know you're angry. But we're here now. You can help." Rodrigue blocked each one of his blows, so damnably calm. "We can take the Kingdom back, now that we have Dimitri once again."

"Then take him. Take your _real_ son and get out of my sight." Felix kept up his advance, though his swings were less careful, he left one too many openings. Rodrigue didn't take them, and Felix just hated him more.

"Is that what you think of me? That I see Dimitri as my real son, rather than you?"

"Isn't it the truth?" Felix swung again, forcing Rodrigue back. "You went to comfort _him_ after Duscur. You abandoned your grieving family in favor of someone else's child!" He kept hitting, aware he had broken Rodrigue's guard, was swinging the blunt training sword into his arms, again and again and again. And Rodrigue was letting him. Continued letting him, until Felix gave in, dropped the sword, his head falling to hide the burning of tears once again in his eyes he wouldn't let fall. Still the pathetic crybaby he had been as a child.

"And yet all you could tell me was that death was a noble goal." He forced out, through the wrenching sob of everything he hadn't been able to say.

"Felix." Rodrigue chanced, "Oh, Felix. Is this what you've been feeling?" He reached out, hands falling to Felix's slight, shaking shoulders.

Felix pushed him, a shallow, ineffectual blow, but he had to do something, to push back against the sea of emotional torment rolling through him and he wanted to retch. Anguish and hate and self-loathing wrenching through him, he felt the tears searing hot down his cheeks. "Stop. _Stop._ You don't get to play the perfect father now, not with everything you've done."

"I know. I made mistakes, and I'm sorry. But let me help now." Rodrigue reached out for him again, and Felix didn't have the strength to stop him, not then. And Felix hated himself for letting his father hold him, in a way he never had before, for crying like the child he had been. Hadn't been allowed to be.

"Stop." He sobbed, hands clenched so tight they trembled. "Fuck you, stop. Let go."

Rodrigue released him, but he didn't let go, smoothing Felix's wild hair, wiping his tears. "I wish I could have been a good knight and a good father. I can hardly stand to see you like this."

"Then just go back to not looking." Felix bit out.

"Let me help you." Rodrigue implored, the hurt was clear.

Felix only hated himself more for the hurt. And hated Rodrigue for everything he'd done, hadn't done. All the times he hadn't been there, had held more care for the king and that boar than his own family. For praising Glenn's death. Honorable, he'd called it. Noble.

"What could you possibly do now?" Felix pushed past him, and his father let him walk away.


	14. But if its Still gonna Hurt in the Morning

He could only stay away from Dimitri for so long. And eventually instinct and worry he didn't acknowledge took over, and he found himself walking the familiar path back to the infirmary. Mercedes had told him. Worry and sorrow and anguish behind her eyes she told him. Tried to comfort him, tried to offer him tea and sweets and favors and kindnesses, like she knew Felix would be upset.

"Dimitri, he, he isn't walking. One of the javelins got in his spine, we're trying Felix, but-" She looked away.

"What do I care if the boar walks or not." Felix turned from her. He couldn't stand that look of pity on her face. The way she knew, she _knew_ that he would be hurt. He would that wrenching in his heart when he heard Dimitri had suffered something like that. That Dimitri would think himself invalid, useless, incapable. That he'd hate himself the way Felix had pretended to hate him for so long.

She touched his arm. "He asks about you. Every day."

"And?"

"He's concerned, Felix. You need to go to him."

"He's not my responsibility to care for." Felix had snapped, and he had pretended he had no mind to her hurt reaction. None of this was his responsibility to care for. He'd left the kingdom, left his king, left everything behind, run away like the crying child he once had been. It had become too much to stay loyal.

But he found himself walking the worn brick pathway back to the infirmary. The halls now were so sparse, the once bustling school grounds now reduced to a handful of soldiers and healers, the few merchants who made the trek to Garreg Mach mostly worked outside the main gate. Conversations were hushed, aching, like speaking too loud would alert the enemy of their presence. The enemy knew where they hid. They didn't care. Felix didn't really want to see anyone anyways. And he didn't want anyone to see him slip into the infirmary, didn't want them to see his long, lingering look at Dimitri's sleeping form. Some of the bandages had been removed, and his back was turned to Felix, and Felix could see the scars the war had left on him. Before he was really aware of it, his fingers were lingering on one, a long line against his shoulder blade, raised and new. One of the javelins he had taken at Gronder, before Felix had found him. His thumb brushed the edge of it, and he wondered if he would have died for the boar, then.

"Felix." Dimitri breathed, still asleep, moved against the touch. Felix didn't take his hand away. He didn't know why he didn't pull away, when Dimitri put his hand over Felix's. When his fingers closed, capturing Felix's hand. Turned over and caught his eye, worn, but awake. "You came back to me."

"You're my king. Whether I like it or not."

His other hand came up, touched Felix's face. And Felix found that suddenly he could not meet Dimitri's eyes. He took Dimitri's hand, set his jaw and moved that rough hand away from him. The touch burned.

"I'm staying." He told Dimitri, eyes still down. Resolute, but unable to face Dimitri's expression. Wasn't expecting Dimitri to push himself to sit up, wrap him in his arms. Hold Felix to him with considerable strength. He didn't have it in him to fight the embrace.

"Felix, Felix." Dimitri repeated, voice a wreck of emotion, "I am no one's king."

Felix managed to find the strength to wrap his arms around Dimitri, hold him in return. "Then find your strength and be mine."

"I don't think I can. What good is a king who cannot stand and fight?"

"A king who cannot fight can still lead. I heard the people, I've seen them, they need someone to lead, not a war monger hellbent on revenge and speaking to ghosts."

"I fear I'm not even much of a leader like this." But he didn't release Felix. He rested his head on his shoulder, and Felix felt the weight of the world that Dimitri bore bearing down on him as well.

And he didn't know if he could hold it up, but he had to try. He had to fight through this, he had to fight his king's war. Give him back a country so he could lead. He had to hunt the wild boar that haunted them all, and he had to do it all while holding Dimitri up. He didn't know if he could. If he could do all this, if he could be the shield Faerghus needed, and survive.

His father would call it a noble death. Eulogize him as a true knight. Bury both his sons and call himself proud. Felix clung tighter to Dimitri, and forced back every word that bubbled in his throat, cruel and kind. There was nothing that could be said.

He just had to hold on.

He had to kiss back, when Dimitri found his lips, gentle, brushing against him, still unpracticed and uncertain.He had to touch, everything he was allowed, brush his hands through Dimitri's hair, it had grown out long and messy, and Felix combed it back, looked anywhere but that burning blue eye. He could read lifetimes in Dimitri's haunted gaze, and he didn't want that weight pressing down on him. On them both. They had enough already.

He sat up, his knees on either side of Dimitri's waist, and he slipped the eyepatch from his eye, touched the stitches, kissed against them. He kissed a scar on the bridge of his nose, from the same wound. Another on his collar, a deep one on his shoulder. _You have fought enough battles,_ each kiss said, _let us fight the war._

And Dimitri kissed his scars, the callouses and cuts on his fingers from training, the branches of lightning from his magic that wrapped around his arms. The thin white line on his throat where he had avoided death by just seconds. The temple of his forehead where there wasn't a scar, where his thoughts raced too quickly to leave a mark. But it was still a wound, and Dimitri kissed it, and, perhaps more bold than he knew, he slipped his hands under Felix's shirt, found scars on his back.

"Stop, boar. You don't know what you're asking."

"And if I do?"

"Then what is it you are asking me for?"

"Love enough that I can feel the trust you've already given." Dimitri didn't move his hands. "If it is something you are willing to grant."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out to you guys, life sort of got in the way for a bit~
> 
> Come and chat with me at addytepes on twitter or aftepes on tumblr!


	15. Is this Love I don't know but Tonight I'm gonna Find Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Life happened. Next chapter will be rated E.

"I don't know if I can." Felix still touched his hair, his shoulder. "I don't know if I'm ready."

Dimitri's hands stilled, pressed against the small of his back. "Is this okay?"

"Yes." Felix sighed, leaned in, kissed him. "And this, this is okay."

Dimitri moved into the kiss, smiled for him, the first smile Felix had seen on him in ages to seem genuine. Without ghosts or despair. Felix stroked his hair away from his face, pressed another kiss, this one to the corner of that smile. "What do you want from me, Dimitri? From this?"

"Your company. Your affection." Dimitri answered, soft. "My name on your lips."

"It is not a simple request." Felix settled, his legs around Dimitri, leaning into the hands at the small of his back, ran strands of that golden hair between his fingers. "There is so much between us that needs to be crossed."

"But if we help each other?"

"There will be fights. Hatred like this cannot be pushed aside so easily. The dead build walls."

"Will it be worth it?" Dimitri ran his fingers up and down Felix's spine. It was a soothing gesture, warm, Felix wanted to bask in it. 

"You know full well I do not have an answer for that." Felix turned aside, dodged the kiss Dimitri tried to grant.

He didn't know what he wanted. This, being offered something he'd dreamed of, in his weaker moments, suddenly seemed too much. Inviting the boar into his life seemed a mistake, and yet it was all he could think of, being surrounded by this, allowing the gentle touches to his spine, his hair, down his arms to cradle his hands and kiss his torn knuckles. 

"Maybe one will come with time." Dimitri soothed, bringing Felix to him. They used to live in each other's arms, close enough to touch any time they needed it, Dimitri would hold him when he cried, always bigger, always taller than him, Felix felt he could be surrounded by Dimitri, and with him that close, nothing could hurt them.

How he longed for those gentler days. Those sun browned summer days at the palace on the lake, running wild and sleeping like pups in a den, huddled for warmth and comfort. How he longed to be close once again, to be the weaker one, to not need that strength like breathing. Strength to protect that memory of happiness for everyone else. He'd told the professor once he was training for a duel with a ghost. She thought he meant his memories of Glenn, and once he'd thought the same. He didn't know anymore. Maybe he meant he was fighting Dimitri's ghosts for him. The twisted and broken Glenn that haunted Dimitri with his cries for death. The thing that wasn't his brother, used his face, his voice to torment Dimitri. Used his memory to torture his king. He trained for a duel with that ghost. One he had to win.

One he couldn't win with a sword.

Instead, he granted Dimitri his kiss, a long one, slow and steady, teaching him without words what he wanted. The ways to kiss that would make him light headed with want. Felix didn't know that Dimitri had ever wanted before, but the way his hands came to move along the curve of Felix's spine, fingers folding in the fabric of his shirt. he was certainly learning what it felt like. And he responded to each kiss in kind, chasing them, open mouthed, his face going flush, breath heavy in the bare inches of space between them. Felix let his hands move over Dimitri's shoulders, feeling the tight cords of muscle underneath scant layers of fabric, layers he wanted to strip clean, expose him, taste the bared skin as it heated under his touch. Felix kissed him again, fierce, his teeth caught Dimitri's lower lip and he reveled in the small gasp of pleasured surprise it brought. He smoothed his hands down Dimitri's strong arms, took his hands to lay kisses to the scarred, broken knuckles.

"My answer is that it will not work. It will hurt, and we will fight, and one day you will be king and I will be your right hand. You will take a wife and these days will fade into memory. But it will happen, nonetheless. I could no more turn away from you than I could pull the sun from the sky."

"And if you are wrong? If it works and we are happy and you are my right hand and my lover?"

"Then I will admit I was wrong." He toyed with the lacing at the front of Dimitri's shirt, moving it between his fingers, pulling it loose.

"So you will deign to be with me?" Dimitri stroked rough fingers through Felix's hair.

"I will try." He brushed his lips across Dimitri's just once more. Touched the curve of his collar, brushing smooth skin, feeling the warmth of it under his fingers. The life of him. "I will try to give you the love you have lacked."

"I have never taken a lover."

"I'm aware." This time, he managed a wry smile. "The boar was too busy with revenge to toy with love."

"And you? Could you put aside your sword long enough?" Dimitri teased, and his smile was everything.

"Once or twice." He answered, honestly.

"Dare I ask?"

"Perhaps one day." He tilted Dimitri, kissed him again, slow, intimate, fingers on the skin of his jaw, his neck, collar. Trying to bring back some of the heat from just a few moments ago. And he felt it, in the quickening of DImitri's pulse, the way he gasped against the kisses he was given. His hands straying to cradle Felix's narrow hips.

"And for now?" Dimitri murmured, into their shared breath.

"For now, I think, if you'll have me..." Felix, for once in his life, struggled to find words.

"I always will. I'll always regret how much time we spent apart." Dimitri kissed him again. He was learning, slow as it was, how Felix wanted to be kissed, deep and unrelenting as warmth grew underneath their hands.

"We don't have to be apart." Felix kissed against his throat, behind his ear, down to his pulse. He thrilled with the shudders it brought from Dimitri, smiled. "But we could be ever closer."

"If you'll have me." Dimitri echoed.


	16. Tracing Fingers Through the Notches in Your Spine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They part where they do the do.

16\. Dimitri

He let Felix tug his clothes away, moving his loose white shirt overhead and tossing it aside, behind him somewhere, Dimitri hardly noticed. He was too focused on the glint in Felix's eye, the way his pupils blown out black as he stared at Dimitri's bared, scarred chest. The way his hands moved, reverent, towards Dimitri, skimming over his shoulders, callouses catching on scars, the mess of both their battles never more clear. Dimitri felt warmth pooling in the pit of his stomach, creeping lower as Felix continued to move, over his chest, fingers pausing on his pectorals. His thumbs rubbed into Dimitri's nipples, and Dimitri's breath caught on a low sound, almost a whimper. He hadn't known he could feel such _pleasure_. Heat moved from where Felix touched, straight down to his groin. Felix leaned in, kissed him, long and intimate, his tongue slipping into Dimitri's mouth as if he could devour every gasp, every tiny, stifled sound that Dimitri made as he tried to move through the impossible warmth, the searing want he'd never quite experienced before.

He'd fantasized about Felix, oh, of course he had. Who hadn't, back in their academy days? His hair grown loose and long, so dark against his pale skin, his bright eyes. The tendrils of sweat that dripped down the back of his neck as he trained, always obsessively training, the cords of taut muscle on his sword arm. His smile, like a predator baring teeth, cruelty and the pain he tried so hard not to show. Dimitri had thought so many times about going to his room at night, trying to coerce him to talk through the hate Dimitri was so certain was a front for something else. For what, he didn't know. But Felix wore that hate like it would protect him, like a suit of armor. Dimitri wanted to corner him, talk through it, beg Felix to tell him what it was he was so scared of. He wanted to kiss away all that anger, all that hate that bubbled up in Felix, kiss him until the fight went out of him. Tell him how beautiful he was, how he had loved him since they were children. Lay him bare and take him, make love to him, whisper against his skin how much he was loved. How beautiful and brave and strong he was. 

He knew now how inexperienced his fantasies were. Felix was beautiful, yes, and brave and strong. But there was no kissing the fight out of him. He kissed like he fought, messy and rough and penetrating. His hands gripped Dimitri's hips, he bit his lower lip, breath fierce in little gasps against Dimitri's heated skin.

"Can I, Felix, can you or can I, um, remove your shirt?" Dimitri chanced. Words were fast abandoning him, all the blood seemed to be draining from his head to pool southward, towards that overwhelming heat between his legs.

Felix responded by pulling his shirt off, tossing it in the same vague direction Dimitri's had gone. He took both Dimitri's hands, larger, but just as rough and worn as Felix's own, and brought them to his chest, showing Dimitri how to touch. Where. And DImitri traced his scars, all those pale lines of every battle they had fought, kissed his bare shoulders, the warmth of his skin so gorgeous against his lips.

"Show me what to do." Dimitri begged, pressing a kiss right over the fervent beating of his heart. His skin was so warm under Dimitri's lips, thrumming with life, flush, pink where he was so pale.

"You seem to be doing just fine on your own." Felix tried to scoff, it came out soft, without any of the bite under his wanting.

"I want to do better than fine." His hands moved lower, cradling Felix's narrow hips. Pulled him closer, and devoured the gasp it brought from Felix in another kiss.

Felix pushed his own hands down Dimitri's chest, heavy and calloused and hot, down to the front of his trousers, pushed down. Dimitri had to frantically arch, rise to allow Felix to undress him fully. And suddenly, too suddenly he was bared, eased back to the bed naked as the day for Felix's approval. For those blazing golden eyes so dark with lust. His rough fingers on Dimitri's legs, making him shudder, making everything seem suddenly so much. Too much. Felix's hands moving up the insides of his legs, pressing them apart. Exposing him further, the whole flush, swollen length of his cock, red and hideous and oversensitive.

"Goddess above, boar. You're a beast all the way through." But Felix smiled. Urged his legs to part again when Dimitri tried to close them, moved to sit between them and rub his hands up and down, up and down his thighs, never going high enough to sate some of that horrible burning want.

"No. It's good." He chided, when Dimitri tried to cover himself again, ashamed of the hungry way Felix was looking at him. "Big, but that's good. Fits the rest of you."

Dimitri flushed, and then he was the one incapable of looking at Felix properly, tried to turn away, tried to hide from that burning gaze. Felix didn't let him. He tilted his head, kissed him, pressed their hips together and even though Felix was clothed still, that incredible, overwhelming friction when he finally felt _something_ on his cock was too much. He moaned, low, buried the sound against Felix's skin. Shuddering, the grip of his hands tightening enough to leave bruises in Felix's pale skin when Felix continued to move his hips against Dimitri, rocking, his breath quickening and Dimitri wanted to exist only in this moment, only to bring Felix so   
much pleasure.

And then Felix touched him. Took the searing hot length of him in hand and stroked, flushed and panting he looked down at what his hand had found and Dimitri all but came right there, at the way Felix touched him, looked at him, showed him he was worth wanting. Dimitri moved him into another messy kiss, missing half the time, kissing against his jaw, his cheek, the side of his lips when he sought what he wanted, that deep, penetrating, filthy kiss, like they were trying to claim each other, ruin each other for all else.

"Let me feel it, Dimitri, let me feel you." Felix pleaded, right against his ear, rutting his still clothed arousal against where they touched, where Felix gripped and pulled at him, getting him off as best he knew how, rough and needy and careless.

And when he came it was like the floodgates had been opened, he begged, calling Felix's name, clutching him so hard he knew the marks would be in the shape of his hands, ingrained into Felix's narrow hips for the rest of time, claiming him. Letting the rest of the world know they belonged together, fit together like nothing else ever would. He knew nothing else but this. This bed, every place they touched, joined, messy and sweet. 

But Felix didn't stop. Kept stroking him, his other hand in Dimitri's wild hair, kissing him. Less needy now, more knowing. Sweet, almost. As sweet as Felix could be, when he punctuated every kiss with a tender bite to his lower lip.

"You made a mess of me, boar."

**Author's Note:**

> aftepes.tumblr.com


End file.
